Maui LLC—a consortium of six broadcast stations headquartered in Oahu that provide an efficient TV signal distribution to subscribers—has deployed Harmonic's ProStream 1000 stream processing solutions and NMX Digital Service Manager for a substantial network rebuild.
The upgrade enables the participating stations to transmit digital broadcast signals from Oahu to Maui and the Big Island of Hawaii over a fiber-based, high-speed data service provided by Time Warner Cable Business Class Services. Harmonic's advanced, high-performance system is part of the solution that replaces Maui LLC's microwave and off-air reception network on Mount Haleakala. The system needed to be upgraded due to TV transmissions that interfered with the astronomy community as well as the fact that the existing analog transmission infrastructure could threaten the surrounding habitat of indigenous bird species, including the endangered Dark Rump Petrel seabird.
The ProStream 1000 system converts ATSC-DTV ASI transport streams from each of the Oahu stations into IP signals, facilitates the transport of the IP streams to Maui and Hawaii via the 10-Gig fiber oceanic CWDM link, then re-converts the streams to ASI for transmission to subscribers. All traffic is encapsulated using Forward Error Correction (FEC). The entire transport system design is calculated to be less than one errored second per year and provides a return path for event backhaul and news bureau feeds that didn't exist before the rebuild.
KITV-TV, the ABC affiliate on Oahu, chairs the Maui LLC consortium. KITV-TV and other Maui LLC members utilize Harmonic’s digital video compression technologies in their headends.
